Making ETDs count in UK repositories

Paul Needham, Cranfield UniversityETD2014, 24th July 2014

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK

Funded by Jisc – two years

Project Team Members: Mimas, The University of Manchester – Project & Service Management & Host

Cranfield University - Development

EvidenceBase, Birmingham City University – User Engagement & Evaluation

Outcome of PIRUS2 (Publisher and Institution Repository Usage Statistics) http://www.cranfieldlibrary.cranfield.ac.uk/pirus2/

Aimed to develop a global standard to enable the recording, reporting and consolidation of online usage statistics for individual journal articles hosted by IRs, Publishers and others

Proved it was *technically feasible*, but (initially) easier without ‘P’

IRUS-UK: Institutional Repository Usage Statistics – UK Enable UK IRs to share/expose usage statistics based on a global standard –

COUNTER

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: aim & objectives

Collect raw usage data from UK IRs for *all item types* within repositories Including Theses and Dissertations

Downloads not record views

Process those raw data into COUNTER-compliant statistics

Return those statistics(+) back to the originating repositories for their own use

Give Jisc (and others) a wider picture of the overall use of UK repositories demonstrate their value and place in the dissemination of scholarly outputs

Offer opportunities for benchmarking/profiling/reporting/

Act as an intermediary between UK repositories and other agencies e.g. global central clearinghouse, national shared services, OpenAIRE, EThOS

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: gathering data

The method we use to gather download data is simple: Whenever a file is downloaded from a participating repository, it sends a

message to the IRUS-UK server with some details about the download

Accomplished by adding a small piece of code to repository software, which employs the ‘Tracker Protocol’

http://www.irus.mimas.ac.uk/help/toolbox/TrackerProtocol-V3-2014-04-22.pdf

Pushes minimal raw download metadata to a third-party server as OpenURL Key/Value strings

Patches for DSpace (1.8.x, 3.x, 4.1) and Plug-in for Eprints (3.2-3.3.x) Implementation guidelines for Fedora Not in IRUS-UK scope, but also successfully deployed by:

OAPEN Library - freely accessible academic books, ARNO software

CORE - millions of scholarly articles aggregated from many Open Access repositories

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: Tracker OpenURL strings

The OpenURL key/value pairs 130.88.212.145 url_ver=Z39.88-2004 url_tim=2014-07-17T00%3A11%3A34Z req_id=urn%3Aip%3A193.201.224.74 req_dat=Mozilla%2F5.0+%28Windows+NT+6.1 rft.artnum=oai%3Aescholar.manchester.ac.uk%3Auk-ac-man-scw-

17m2898 svc_dat=%2Fapi%2Fdatastream%2Findex.jsp%3F%26publicationPid

%3Duk-ac-man-scw%3A17m2898%26datastreamId%3DFULL-TEXT.PDF rfr_dat=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.escholar.manchester.ac.uk%2Fapi

%2Fdatastream%3FpublicationPid%3Duk-ac-man-scw%3A17m2898%26datastreamId%3DFULL-TEXT.PDF

rfr_id=www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: processing data

Logs of download data are processed (mostly) daily

Several Perl scripts which Remove known robots in the COUNTER robots list Remove additional robots IRUS-UK has identified Examine remaining entries by IP and UserAgent removing further

suspicious activity Sort and filter entries following COUNTER rules Consolidate daily accesses for each item Update DB with new statistics For items new to the system:

use OAI-PMH GetRecord to retrieve metadata from Source IR

Update the metadata in the DB

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IRUS-UK: processing data (2)

The key point is we apply the COUNTER Code of Practice to filter out robots and double clicks

However the COUNTER Robot Exclusion list is specified only as a *minimum requirement*

It does a good job eliminating ‘good’ robots, but more can be done

In fact, in an Open Access environment, more really does need to be done

There’s all sorts of weird behaviour out there

‘Bad’ robots

Spammers, dictionary attackers, gamers . . .

We need a more sophisticated filtering system!

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: robots and unusual usage

We commissioned Information Power to: Analyse raw data we’ve collected since July 2012 Test the feasibility of devising a set of algorithms that would ‘dynamically’

identify and filter out unusual usage/robot activity A report on that work is available from http://www.irus.mimas.ac.uk/news/

Key findings from the work are Suspicious behaviour can’t necessarily be judged on the basis of one day’s

usage records or a month’s. At certain levels of activity machine/non-genuine usage is practically

indistinguishable from genuine human activity.

 Taking this forward I’m chairing the recently formed COUNTER Working Group on Robots Outcomes will become incorporated into COUNTER standard And, of course, adopted by IRUS-UK!

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: “What’s the value proposition?”

Facilitates comparable, standards-based measurements

Provides consistent and comprehensive statistics conforming to a well-recognised, global standard (COUNTER)

Provides statistics on the same basis as those from other conformant supplier including scholarly publishers

Presents opportunities for benchmarking at a national level

Provides an evidence base for repositories to develop policies and initiatives to help support their objectives

Helps develop a user community that will ensure that the service is responsive to user requirements

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: “What’s the value proposition?”

Additionally : Cost to repository of participating in IRUS-UK:

Financially = nothing (until at least 2015/16) Timewise = the time taken to apply and test a patch – typically 5-

10 minutes

Each institution's repository/ies will get standardised statistics conforming to the COUNTER standard for free - whereas, to achieve it themselves they would bear the cost of the formal audit and all associated work.

irus.mimas.ac.uk

IRUS-UK: Theses and Dissertations

So, what about ETDS?

They’re a significant part of the service

ETDs in IRUS-UK represent 20% of items (43K )

account for 28% of downloads (5.1M )

IRUS-UK demo:

http://www.irus.mimas.ac.uk/portal/

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IRUS-UK: Overall Summary

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IRUS-UK: ItemType Summary Statistics

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IRUS-UK: ETD Report 1 (ETD1)

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IRUS-UK: Repository Report 1 (RR1)

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IRUS-UK: Item Statistics (1)

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IRUS-UK: Item Statistics (2)

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IRUS-UK: Item Statistics (3)

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IRUS-UK: Item Statistics (4)

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IRUS-UK: Item Statistics (5)

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IRUS-UK: how to join

If you are a UK repository: Contact us at irus.mimas.ac.uk to register your interest Answer a few questions on the type of repository you

have and the version you are running Get advice from us on what work will be involved

depending on your repository type and version Implement any changes advised and then see your

usage data instantly in IRUS-UK with no more work from you

“The set up was quick and painless, which is always a delight!”

“Consistent collection of statistics without me having to do it!”

irus.mimas.ac.uk

Contacts & Information

If you wish to contact IRUS-UK: irus@mimas.ac.uk

Project web site: http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/

Further IRUS-UK webinars to be scheduled for 2014/2015

Thank you!